Ready to Die(2)

Back with the platoon of Millennium soldiers and Zorin, they all continued racing along the grass fields and heading for the hellsing manor when one of them stepped on something...

A landmine.

"Oh landmine... LANDMI-"

Boom!

In an instant, the landmine explodes, killing him as a result. This doesn't go unnoticed by the rest of the vampire soldiers as they widened their eyes in realization.

"Landmine?!"

"Landmine!?"

"Landmine??"

Due to the speed they were traveling, none of them could stop themselves as several more Millennium soldiers were blown up by landmines. Fortunately for the rest of the Millennium soldiers and Zorin, they managed to halt their tracks since they now know the entire grassfield was covered in landmines.

"Holy shit! They planted landmines!"

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"Oh, zey found the landmines." Pip said calmly as he observed the entire scenario through the monitors.

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"They planted landmines?!" Seras exclaimed in shock next to the window inside the manor.

"Good thinking I saved the dogs in time." Alcina said in relief, recalling yesterday of her saving them all when she's giving them a walk in the field only to get herself blown up as a result. Luckily, landmines alone were insufficient to cause her any harm.

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"Okay, ve have to stay calm!" Shouted one of the Millennium soldiers, "Nobody moved an inch! We'll double back with Zorin, then-"

Before the Nazi vampire could finish his sentence, one of the Wild Geese mercenaries pressed a detonator, causing several hidden claymores buried within the grass to detonate and explode in slow motion with silver grapeshot.

"Annnd veeee'llll- Ohhh… shi-"

As the slow motion comes to an end, the ball bearings shred him apart completely along with many more nearby Millennium soldiers as they were being splattered by the fragments of the grapeshot.

Zorin and the rest of the Millennium soldiers stopped their advance and hastily sought cover behind some trees and rocks as the Wild Geese mercenaries from the manor began firing grenades from grenade-launcher turrets and using their assault rifles as well to prevent them from advancing any further.

"Damn them! Zhey were prepared!"

Peering from their cover, the Millennium soldiers attempted to launch a counterattack against the defenders when they noticed a moving cloud composed solely of insects from the sky. Before long, the swarm of insects encircled them, obstructing their view and hindering their movement.

"The hell is this?!"

"Just shoot it!"

The Millennium soldiers followed Zorin's commands and began shooting them with their MP40s and Kar98ks, but the bullets did nothing to the insect swarm. Just then, a feminine giggling and sinister laughter can be heard emanating from within the insect swarm.

"Hahahahahahaha! Bullets can't harm us!"

It was though she was the insect swarm itself, Daniela suddenly materialized behind a Millennium soldier and sliced his head with her sickle that was now laced in silver. A second after one millennium soldier dies, it is followed by Bela and Cassandra materializing from the swarm and cutting two Millenium soldiers' heads off with their silver-laced sickles while being blinded by the swarm of flies.

Witnessing his soldiers being slaughtered by the vampiric trios, one Millennium soldier brings out a flamethrower.

"Say hello to my little friend!"

…Then pulls the trigger sending a geyser of flame spewing out of the barrel of the flamethrower. The Dimetrescu daughters morphed back into a swarm of flies and hurriedly fled back from the flames before it could harm any of them.

"Not what I want right now!" Bela yelled as she quickly flew towards another Millennium soldier at blinding speed and severed his head with her sickle before snatching his rifle.

The Millennium soldier attempts to burn Cassandra and Daniela with his flamethrower, but since they were flying around, he is unable to hit one of them.

"Stay still!"

As the Millennium soldier tries to burn the two sisters, he failed to notice when Bela raised the gun she stole and pulled the trigger, shooting the weapon's fuel tank and causing it to explode, resulting in it killing the Millennium soldier along with several others nearby.

Once they dealt with a significant number of them, Bela along with her two sisters fly back to the manor, waving at the Millennium soldiers and Zorin while flying through the air with a cheerful grin.

"Byeeeeeeeeee!"

"Bitch!" Zorin shouted, infuriating

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Pip, who remained in the manor's security room, witnessed the entire thing through the monitors, slightly chuckling in amusement upon watching it all happen, like it was something out of a movie. At that moment, a wild geese mercenary known as Willingham strode into the room and fixed his leader with a gaze.

"Sir, we've stopped the enemy's advance towards us and keep the bombardment and gunfire ongoing. They won't be moving anytime soon."

"Good job. The Dimitrescu daughters were able to cut down their numbers a bit as well so that's a plus that I will gladly accept. As long as none of them enter the manor we are good, but if they do, we lose."

"Sir, you think they will withdraw?"

"Willingham, we aren't the best in fighting and we always performed our jobs as mercenaries by staying as far away from the enemy as we could before getting paid once the job is done. If they were humans they would surely flee no doubt or at the very least be dead already before they could hit us, but as I mentioned earlier, we are not dealing with humans. We are dealing with monsters. They'll figure out a method some way to break through the line."

Out of nowhere, a Reich soldier came crashing from the ceiling's vent and landed into the floor. The Reich soldier got to his feet and noticed Pip and Willingham were staring at him.

"..."

"..."

"...Unter uns (...Among us)"

Breaking the awkward silence, the Reich soldier raised his assault rifle and shot at them, but Pip and Willinham managed to react in time to scurry behind cover before pointing their guns at him and unleashing a stream of bullets in return. However, the Nazi soldier from the alternate universe moves with swift movement and incredible reflexes, avoiding most of the bullets before lunging at the two with its bayonet attaching to its gun and thrusting forward with a war cry.

"Für das Reich! (For the Reich!)"

Unfortunately for the Nazi soldier, before he could reach the two and plunge his blade onto one of them, he was headshotted by another Wild geese mercenary entering the room with a desert eagle in his hands.

"Oh my lord, what happened!?"

Ignoring the third mercenary's words, Willingham knelt next to the lifeless Reich soldier's body and examined his uniform until realizing something.

"That's not WW2 German clothing."

"And he's not a vampire." Pip added as he briefly fixed his gaze to inspect. As he stood up, he glanced over to Willingham who was standing beside him.

"Forsaken?"

"Definitely Forsaken's friends."

"And they're already in the manor without us realizing it!"

At that moment, Pip noticed something odd, the firing they had been hearing for the past few minutes had stopped from the mercenaries' side.

"Men! Report! Why did you stop the firing?!" Pip barked over to the radio.

[Pip, it's me.] Bela's voice spoke out.

"What's going on?! Why has the firing stopped?!"

[I'm not sure! Your men are freaking out for some reason and saying that there is a two-hundred-feet tall woman with a scythe standing outside the manor.]

"...Quoi? (...What?)"

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Outside the manor, Zorin is seen materializing into a giant and laughing maniacally as everyone within the hellsing mansion frozen in fear, Pip and Willingham run out of the control room into the hallway and meet with the rest of the mercenaries.

Halting themselves, the two widened their eyes upon laying their eyes on an enormous woman standing in front of them.

"This... This is a trick!"

Raising her scythe, the giant Zorin swings it down on the manor and sliced right through the hallway where the mercenaries and Seras were. The entire ceiling of the hallway collapsed on them, injuring countless mercenaries. The scythe even severs some of their limbs off which puts them in a state of shock and panic.

…If only they knew that what they were experiencing was fictitious. When Alcina and her daughters arrived in the hallway where the mercenaries and Seras were, for some reason they were unable to see the mercenaries injured, the ceiling collapsed, nor see the giant Zorin from their own perspective even though the mercenaries and Seras could only see it for whatever reason.

"Why are they panicking?!" Alcina shouted in confusion as she observed the majority of the mercenaries scream and flee in terror.

"My arm! Where's my arm?!"

"My legs! They're gone!"

"I can't move!"

"We're gonna die here. This is the end." Pip uttered in desperation.

"...They've gone cuckoo crazy." Her daughters remarked in unison.

"Snap out of it, Bernadotte!" Alcina shouted at Pip as she grabbed him by the collar. But the latter was still in a state of shock and panic and didn't respond to her like the other mercenaries and Seras.

"They're not listening to us, mother!" Bela said.

"We have an enemy marching at the front doors of the manor and we need all of them back to their senses or we're going to be overwhelmed!"

"This... can't be happening," Seras mumbled as she fell to her knees in utter despair. But then she noticed something, "Wait a second. Why do I feel like I'm not watching this moment all alone?"

Seras was, in fact, correct. Someone from her mind was monitoring the entire thing that was happening right in front of her...

It was Alucard.

[I told you about your third eye, Seras. Your human eyes are not reliable, they will only cause blindness. Besides, you're no longer human. You have become so much more.]

Instinctively, Seras gradually closed her eyes before opening them again, which was replaced with crimson red. Simultaneously, it triggered her third-eye ability enabling her to see that the mercenaries were no longer injured, the ceiling hadn't collapsed and whatever it was she was seeing... was an illusion.

"It's an illusion."

"Seras! Are you okay?"

Snapping her out of her daze, Seras found herself being shook back and forth by Alcina.

"I-I'm fine," Seras replied as she fixed her gaze on Alcina, "Alcina, these men are seeing an illusion, what they're seeing is not real!"

"Then why can't me and my daughters can't see what the men are seeing?!"

"Maybe... you're from another universe that's why our universe's laws of power might not be working on you?" Seras responded awkwardly.

"And you just guessed that?" Alcina cocked her eyebrow in bewilderment, "Whatever. Deal with the person who's doing this."

"Got it!" Seras shouted with a nod as she swiftly picked up her automatic rifle from the floor and aimed it outside the window. Using her enhanced vampire vision, she soon spotted the real Zorin standing across the grassy fields at the manor's outskirts with her palm touching the ground, creating the illusion she was responsible for which led the mercenaries to believe that whatever they were experiencing was real even though it was not.

Pointing her rifle out a window and with her vampiric vision active, she fired multiple rounds with one of which grazing Zorin's cheek, causing the giant Zorin illusion to feel the identical scratch on its own cheek and, with a fierce roar, the illusion fades away.

"The illusion's gone!"

The Wild Geese mercenaries slowly come out of the illusion and discover they were no longer injured as their limbs have not been amputated. Now they got to hold themselves.

"My arm... it's fine."

Pip, meanwhile, was still in a state of shock when Alcina suddenly gave him a hard slap across the face.

"Wake up! What you saw isn't real?!"

"Yes! It was an illusion!"

Upon regaining his senses, Pip exclaimed, "Wait! That giant bitch wasn't real?!"

"That's right!"

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"You saw through my illusion, eh? Very clever Seras Victoria," Zorin said as her expression shifted to extreme caution, "And for some reason it didn't work on the tall lady and her daughters. But it doesn't matter. You all will still die screaming."

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Shattered!

Two Millennium soldiers burst into the manor through the windows of the same hallway where Seras, Pip and the rest were still and charged towards them. One of the vampire soldiers had attempted to bite one of the mercenaries in the neck, but Alcina swiftly grasped his head before he could kill a single one.

"ゴ ゴ ゴ ゴ ゴ ゴ"

"Uhhhhh mercy?"

"Sorry, all out of mercy."

With murderous intent greater than any vampires, Alcina ripped his head clean off and crushed it with the palm of her hand. Gazing above, Alcina noticed the other Millennium soldier on the ceiling, leaped to stab her only for Seras to quickly jump over Alcina and thrust the barrel of her automatic rifle into the Millennium soldier's mouth before pulling the trigger, blowing his head clean off as his body went limp.

"Thanks for the assist, Seras."

"You're welcome."

Suddenly, they heard the sound of an explosion outside the manor, they looked through a window and saw that the Millennium soldiers were able to figure out the landmines and immediately break through the front entrance. Zorin's illusion served as a distraction to allow them to get close to the manor.

"That's not good." Alcina said.

Pip stated, "These guys aren't the only problems here."

"What?"

Willingham clarified, "Yeeeeeah, some guy came out of the vents and tried to kill me and Pip, and while he had the emblem of the Reich. He was human. Not a vampire and his uniform seemed too detailed and armored unlike the ones Millenium is wearing."

Alcina frowned, "...Forsaken's allies."

"Exactly, and with Millenium here as well it's double the trouble."

At that precise moment, the walls on their left burst open and a Panzerhund plowed right through it and lunged into one of the mercenaries, crushing his abdomen between its jaws and chopped his body into two. Abruptly, it was instantly showered with bullets from the mercenaries, but its metallic body simply shrugged them off as it dove into the next mercenary.

But before it could bite the head off of its next victim, Alcina instantly seized the Panzerhund by the jaws and kept it at bay.

"The hell is that?!" Seras exclaimed.

With a large propulsion of her strength, Alcina punched it's face and tossed it out of the window, sending the Panzerhund crashing into a fountain where the water shorted out the hund's circuitry, causing it to malfunction and cease working, rendering it unusable

"Giant dogs made of steel and machinery. Not what I wanted today."

Staring at the lifeless body of the mercenary whose body had been split into two, Pip closed his eyes and praised his fallen men before turning to face the ladies behind him, "Okay, listen up Seras, Alcina. My men and I will barricade ourselves in a part of the building and be on the defensive. While you five will be on the offensive against both Millennium and this highly advanced Reich. Reduce them to nothing."

"Right!" Seras gave out a nod.

Alcina and her daughters, on the other hand, chuckled maliciously, "Oh, we will..."

"Remember, you ladies are our ace in the hole. The life of every man in this manor is in your hands."

Alcina glanced over at the mercenaries behind her and noticed they had the look of "I'm counting on you"on their faces.

"...You know we aren't human right, Bernadotte? We might survive. You and your men might not."

"Lady Dimitrescu, your concern is reasonable but we're mercenaries. Our job is to stare death at the face everyday and get paid. You just do your job. We do ours, lady."

"Seras, you have something to say?" Alcina asked as she gazed at Seras.

"...Good luck to you all," Seras said with a smile, "We won't let you down."

Pip smiled in return, "Okay, but before you-"

Alcina interrupts him, "No! We are leaving! Time is being wasted here! Bye!"

Throwing Seras over her shoulder, Alcina dashes down the hallway at inhuman speed with her daughters trailing behind.

"Those ladies are just something else," One of the mercenaries remarked as they watched them leave.

Pip responded, "Yeah. Far too good for the likes of us." He then continued, "Alright guys, let's move out."

On Pip's orders, the mercenaries move out.